As a mother of four and a counselor herself, Lilly Delarosa deals with distress on a daily basis.

"It's an everyday thing for me," said Delarosa, a counselor advocate at a crisis center in Naples. "It's tragic because there is loss of life and it is something unexpected."

She tells her kids to talk about everything and always ask questions.

"I always explain that when we hold things in, it's a ticking time bomb, so releasing is a good thing," she said. "The key thing is to talk to one another, sit down as a family and discuss things like this and why they do happen and how they will happen. We can't sugarcoat everything because it is the real world."

"It shouldn't take trauma for parents to talk to their kids. You should be talking your kids on a regular basis," Streyffeler said. "In addition to talking to your kids, you need to listen to your kids, and you need to ask questions before you start giving answers."

But Streyffeler said the discussion should be different, depending on the child. She said you should keep disturbing details from your youngest kids.

"You never lie to them, but you don't have to tell them the whole truth," Streyffeler said.

She said it's natural for kids to feel strong emotions, but it's the parents' responsibility to tell them the appropriate way to express those emotions.

"Talk about the difference between how you feel and your behavior. Acting out certain feelings is not OK, but that doesn't mean the feeling isn't OK. The feelings, they hurt. The truth is that they suck," Streyffeler said. "When somebody dies, grief hurts. But sometimes you just have to hurt. You have to get through it because not feeling it doesn't make it go away. It just kind of puts it in a box to come back later."

If your child asks you the difficult question of why people commit senseless murders, Streyffeler said it's OK for parents to admit to their kids they don't know.

"The fact is, we don't know why," Streyffeler said. "Different people do things for different reasons and to try to attach reason to something that makes no logical sense is something that you can't do. Sometimes it's OK to say I wish I could tell you why, I wish I knew why, but the truth is I don't."